Handheld Addict

Friday, May 15, 2009

Television de Portable P2

3 weeks ago I saw this at Play-Asia.com: It's called Television de Portable P2, and it claims to allow PSP-2000 to play GAMES on a non-progressive TV! It was discounted from like $80.00 to $19.90 U.S. (+$9.00 shipping) At that price, I had to bite!

It took almost 3 weeks to ship to Canada... which is slower than I'm used to with Play-Asia (they usually take 2 weeks). In fact, I was starting to get worried... I was ready to fire off an email to them just to make sure everything was ok, but then I got the package this morning.

Most of the text is in Japanese, which I neither speak nor read. I can understand "PSP-2000" though :)

It seems fairly straightforward; there's a composite video, S-Video, L & R audio plugs. So you can choose to use either composite (yellow) video or S-video cable.

Inside the package is very minimal, 2 pamphlets in Japanese (instructions). the Television de Portable P2 has a wire that splits into PSP video hookup & power adapter... those go to this rectangular dongle that looks about the size of a Zippo lighter. Then the wire leads from that to the tv hookups.

On the rectangular dongle, there's an adapter port that takes your PSP adapter. It needs to be plugged in for the device to work. What's nice is that it has the pass-through cable so you can hook your PSP up to the adapter while you're playing through the P2.

One concern is that the PSP adapter plugged into the Television de Portable P2, that little retangular dongle gets *HOT*, very quickly. There's a nice blue LED that shows when the PSP adapter is plugged in, but you don't want to leave it plugged in when you're not using it.

So as to how it works.... you plug in the composite cables, plug the PSP adapter into the Television de Portable P2, and set your PSP-2000 to "progressive" video, and it works.

The Television de Portable P2 cable is about 9 ft long. Comparing the signal & picture quality to my official Sony AV (composite) cables, which I extend using some RCA extenders I bought from the dollar store (cost about $4.00 for 2 of them... yay for Dollar Stores!)

I'm using a 27" CRT TV.

NOTE: You will see some moray pattern effects on the tv screen, this is mostly due to the camera/CRT TV, not necessarily visable in real life.

This is the official AV cables:

This is the Television de Portable P2. Picture quality is a bit more faded:

I booted up my favourite game, Star Wars Battlefront: Renegade Squadron. The colour doesn't seem bad, but the loading screen text is blurry, and very hard to read.

(I don't believe that moray pattern in that picture was visible in real life. Keep in mind that some blurriness is due to my camera.)

As with the regular component gameplay, there's a black border around the image, making the actual image quite small in comparision. On my 27" TV, I have to sit pretty close to it to really play any games on my PSP.

The picture quality isn't terrible, but it isn't sharp enough for small details, like small text. I'm assuming that it isn't much better for PSP-3000's composite TV gameplay, as any mention of it by forum posters usually goes like, "Yah my PSP-3000 plays games on my regular tv KTHX BYE" . I could be wrong, it may be a bit sharper but I suspect the limitations of an interlaced, non-HD TV can only show so much with a PSP game signal. Still, it is a bit disappointing. I really wanted gameplay on my regular TV, and it's the feature I was most envious about PSP-3000.... I *almost* bought a core PSP-3000 yesterday, and now I'm kinda glad I didn't. It's probably best to wait to upgrade my TV to an HD, LCD that can possibly zoom the PSP gameplay image so it isn't so small with the borders.

Still, I think Television de Portable P2 is worth it, if you only have a PSP-2000 and really want to play games on your non-HDTV. As far as I know, there aren't any other options out there, other than buying a PSP-3000. So it's cool.

UPDATE: I just tried the S-video output, and the picture was noticibly improved! The smallest text was still difficult to read, but most of the other text was much clearer.

Pros:

+allows PSP-2000 to play games on a non-HD TV!!!!!

+PSP AC adapter pass-through that allows PSP to charge/run on external power while playing Television de Portable P2.

Cons:

-picture quality isn't as good as it should be.

-Television de Portable P2 needs to be plugged in to the PSP AC adapter to work, and it gets really hot while it is.

-hard to find.

Overall, I'm pretty darn happy right now with it! Gives me that one feature I really wanted with my PSP, the option to play games on my TV.